> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.rollingnichols.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Why We Rebuilt Harriet's Electrical System - URL: https://www.rollingnichols.com/why-we-rebuilt-harriets-electrical-system/ - Published: 2026-09-26T22:05:42.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-20T19:34:51.000Z - Author: Phil Nichols - Tags: #no-home, Life on the Road For seven or eight years, we traveled in [Phyllis](https://rollingnichols.com/phyllis-where-we-learned-to-rv/?ref=rollingnichols.com), the RV we really cut our teeth on. For the most part, we traveled from pedestal to pedestal. We would leave one campground, drive to the next one, plug back in, and go about our business. There is absolutely nothing wrong with traveling that way. We did it for years and enjoyed every bit of it. But somewhere along the way, I started noticing people doing something different. They could pull into a rest area, a parking lot, or somewhere else without hookups and still use their RV almost as though they were sitting in a campground. The outlets worked. The microwave worked. They weren't constantly deciding what could and couldn't be turned on simply because they weren't plugged into shore power. The more I looked into it, the more I realized what was possible. That started me thinking less about individual pieces of equipment and more about what I actually wanted an electrical system to accomplish. ## Starting With a Goal In conversations with my brother, I eventually came up with a baseline. I wanted to be able to pull into a Walmart parking lot, shut Harriet down for the night, and run the bedroom air conditioner from the batteries. That wasn't because Walmart parking lots were suddenly going to become our preferred campgrounds. It was simply an easy test. If the electrical system could comfortably handle an air conditioner overnight, then most of the other things we normally wanted to do without hookups weren't going to be much of a problem. That became the starting point. I began designing the system in the fall of 2025. Before choosing batteries or inverters, there were some fairly basic decisions to make. Should the system be 12 volts, 24 volts, or 48 volts? Each had advantages and disadvantages. After working through those choices, I settled on 24 volts. From there came the more important question: **What did we want to be able to run when Harriet wasn't plugged in?** My answer was pretty much everything. Not necessarily everything at once, and not without regard for how much energy we were using, but I didn't want the electrical system determining whether we could use a microwave, make coffee, watch television, charge computers, run the refrigerator, or plug something into an outlet. I wanted Harriet to feel like Harriet whether she was plugged into a campground pedestal or not. ## The Ace in the Hole Harriet also had something that changed the way I approached the entire project: an 8,000-watt Onan generator. That became my ace in the hole. A lot of large RV electrical upgrades are built around putting as much solar as possible on the roof. There is good reason for that, especially for people who spend extended periods boondocking. But that isn't really how we travel. Harriet already had a substantial generator capable of producing power whenever we needed it. Instead of pretending it wasn't there, I decided to make it an intentional part of the system. That changed the design. Rather than covering the roof with solar panels from the beginning, I concentrated first on battery capacity, inverter capacity, and several reliable ways to recharge the batteries. Today we can charge from a campground pedestal. We can charge from the generator. We can charge from the alternator while we're driving. And we already have the ability to connect solar. I also carry a couple of portable solar panels that we can use when it makes sense. ## Why Not Solar First? Solar wasn't rejected. It was postponed. I wanted to travel with the new system for a season before deciding how much solar Harriet actually needs. That's an important distinction. It would have been easy to install a large solar array simply because that's what a lot of high-capacity RV electrical systems have. But I would rather find out how we actually use the system before drilling holes in the roof and filling available space with panels. After a season of living with it, we'll have real information. How often are we running the generator? How much charging do we get during normal travel days? How much battery capacity are we actually using overnight? Would solar substantially reduce generator use, or would we be installing a lot of equipment that contributes relatively little to the way we travel? I'm already leaning toward adding solar, but now it will be based on experience instead of a guess. ## Building for the Way We Travel That's probably the biggest lesson from the entire project. There isn't one correct way to build an RV electrical system. Someone spending weeks on public land in Arizona has different needs than someone moving between full-hookup RV resorts. A weekend camper has different needs than someone traveling for months at a time. And someone perfectly happy traveling pedestal to pedestal may not need any of this. We did that for years in [Phyllis](https://www.rollingnichols.com/phyllis-where-we-learned-to-rv/). What changed wasn't that the old way was wrong. We simply reached a point where we wanted more flexibility. I wanted to know that we could stop somewhere for the night without worrying about hookups. I wanted the outlets to work. I wanted to use the kitchen normally. I wanted the bedroom to be comfortable. And I wanted several different ways to put energy back into the batteries. The equipment that eventually went into Harriet is interesting, and there is quite a bit of it. The equipment and specifications are on [Harriet’s page](https://www.rollingnichols.com/harriet/). But the equipment wasn't really the point. The point was building an electrical system around the way we wanted to travel.